Author Description

This long-overdue monograph rediscovers the fifty-year career of Robert De Niro, Sr., an important New York School painter and poet. The first comprehensive monograph on painter and poet Robert De Niro, Sr. (1922-1993), a major contributor to postwar American art, known for his unique, bold style of painterly representation. De Niro was a visionary artist in the early days of Abstract Expressionism and a celebrated member of the New York School of painters, along with Mark Rothko, Willem de Kooning, and Jackson Pollock. Over the course of his fifty-year career, he painted portraits, still lifes, the female nude, and interiors with a signature gestural painting style and brilliant color, which bear the influence of Henri Matisse as well as his teacher, Hans Hofmann. During the height of Abstract Expressionism and Pop Art in the 1960s, De Niro remained faithful to his own vision in his paintings and poetry; today his powerful figural works are ripe for rediscovery. This lavishly illustrated book brings together De Niro's paintings, prints, and drawings as well as a never- before-published selection of his writings and poetry. Featuring essays by noted scholars and an illustrated biography including many unpublished photographs and ephemera, this seminal volume explores the depth and breadth of De Niro's oeuvre.